Google's Penguin Updates Getting Stricter

There’s too much going on in the SEO world, with Google algorithm changing every so often. Now, from the results of studies by Portent, an Internet marketing company, we are alerted that Google’s Penguin updates are really getting stricter. Its tolerance of web spam backlinks and online spam contents has dropped. So we’re not sure how SEO experts can still manage to put their rankings up high, even with good pay per click management. In this article, we will learn more about the implications to the recent launch of Google Penguin update.

5 Things You Should Know About Google’s Penguin Updates

1. More Sites Getting Penalized

Google has been policing websites since the start of 2011 and rapidly now it has been penalizing sites with dubious content and links. There has been reported a steady reduction of tolerance of web spam. This means that out of the fifty websites listed on the Inc. 5000 list in 2012, 36 had been seen as clean. “Clean” here implies than there’s no more than 10 percent of their links with questionable sources. In between the figures, there were 11 to 39 percent found to be most possibly spam, while four other sites were seen at risk and thus were penalized. This stricter standard makes a lot of content marketers and webmasters worry, as we cannot be sure how low the tolerance would get in the coming months.

2. Probability to Rank Lower

If your website contains a lot of spammy backlinks (inbound link from any irrelevant web page), Google web crawlers will soon identify your site as manipulative. This signals your ranking to go low. To figure that one out, count the number of keyword-rich links you have published in your press releases. It’s better to delete them or replace them with something else if the links don’t make any relevance or connection with your overall content. If your website is consists of low quality content, then Google would deem it with no value hence again trigger its filter to mark your site as spam.

3. Danger in the Usage of SEO Tool

If you have been using automated tool for your SEO, be careful on how it is creating backlinks to sites. With the new Google Penguin update, every online site (forum, blog, etc.) is prone to be penalized when there are random forum links or link lists of unrelated pages posted on it. As a precaution, check whether you have missed to capture and delete these spams and unnatural links made on your site. Also check for superlative words used. Words like “super,” “amazing,” and “secret” as part of the headline can be seen as spam.

Once you have identified the spam links and low-quality content made in your web pages, a good practice is to remove them. In Google terms, this is to “disavow” these links. If you are eager to remove these bad links, list the link or file and request the webmaster to remove them to protect your pages to be hurt. Through Google’s Webmasters tool, processing the request might take time for consideration (up to a number of weeks), but waiting is worth the effort to cover yourself.

As Google is constantly finding ways to search for spam, it strictly includes paid links for online advertising to its spam list. In the first launch of Penguin, the rank of pages with this type of paid links was decreased by 30%. AdWords are highly affected, since Google does not allow phone numbers in AdWords texts any longer. This feature is called as its call extension.

Conclusion

There’s no point in hurrying to rank number one in Google search engine when you are doing unclean strategies in your SEO tactics. Google will find out about it and police your web page. So it’s better to stay safe and publish quality content to offer to readers. Since there will always be changing patterns and stricter rules in each Google update, it’s best that you take the time to review your site and delete doubtful and illegal links made by guest bloggers and commenters.